I took Fortran at UMass, 1977. I kind of liked it in a soothing way. We had fan fold terminals in the dorms. No monitor. You logged on, wrote your ‘program’, hit run and waited. Unless you wanted really fast times, then you woke up at 2 in the morning.
You could get a job loading punch cards in the computer lab.
I can’t remember but was the book by Tracy Kidder( ? ) The Soul of A New Machine, about DEC?
Data General. It mentions DEC in a somewhat derogatory way (the competition).